March 15, 2006
MarkBernstein.org
 

100 Stories

The morning began with a quick trip to the University for email and a quick trip to the shoe repair store for an urgently-needed hardware patch. Then, off to the City Museum, which has a wonderful room on 20th century Wellington, explained with a tiny little story for each year. There's the year of ghastly murders, the year the All Blacks beat Australia 11-6, the year of ill-advised urban renewal, the year of the failed (but influential) general strike.

There's also a nifty exhibit of Plimmer's Ark, which started out as a nifty new sailing ship, ran aground, was salvaged and beached to make an important downtown store. The store was eventually replaced by sturdy brick buildings, and when these buildings were renovated in the preservationist aftermath the the year of ill-advised urban renewal, there in the basement was the keel of the ship that ran aground so many years before.

Then, quite by accident I ran into the Gedyes -- the BlogHui organizers -- on Cuba Street, and somehow we spent the afternoon going to a succession of dazzling places all around the harbour. Terns, gulls, shags (shags!) and, yes, that was a penguin, sitting on a rock!